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" I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's really something new, it's a new kind of civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Cyborg | ||
| A combination of a human being (at least the thinking part) and a machine. |
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress contains a number of references to cyborgs; the best way to see what he meant by it is to look through them.
| Being kissed by Wyoming Knott is more definite than being married to most women. Had I been Mike all my lights would have flashed at once. I felt like a Cyborg with pleasure center switched on...
There was a solar storm warning but the pilot thought he could make it – or didn't care; he was a Cyborg... "Man, I saw one disturbing report. It was claimed that attempts are being made at the University of Peiping to combine computers with human brains to achieve massive capacity. A computing Cyborg." "Here we are, two million males, less than one million females. A physical fact, basic as rock or vacuum. Then add idea of tanstaafl. When thing is scarce, price goes up. Women are scarce; aren't enough to go around – that makes them most valuable thing in Luna, more precious than ice or air, as men without women don't care whether they stay alive or not. Except a Cyborg, if you regard him as a man, which I don't."
"Excuse me but isn't there an exceptionally fine computer at Peiping University?" |
| From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by GP Putnam in 1966 Additional resources -
|
I've read elsewhere on the Internet (must be true, nyet?) that the term "cyborg" is a contraction of the phrase "cybernetic organism" and was coined in 1960 by a Dr. Manfred Clynes for a NASA conference.
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
